Don’t Put That in a Miller Trust

Miller Trusts (also known as Qualified Income Trusts) exist to fulfill a very specific purpose in the world of Texas Nursing Home Medicaid eligibility. In order to fulfill that purpose, everyone involved with the Miller Trust must perform their roles correctly. Failure to do so can result in the Miller Trust not working as intended and jeopardize Medicaid eligibility for your loved one.

A Texas Nursing Home Medicaid applicant only needs a Miller Trust if their gross monthly income exceeds the limit established by the HHSC each year ($2,130 in 2013). A Miller Trust’s job is to receive a Medicaid applicant’s income so that it is not counted for eligibility purposes. One critical fact that must exist in order to achieve this goal is that the only deposits going into the Miller Trust are the Medicaid applicant’s income that is assigned to the Miller Trust.

If anything else is deposited into the Miller Trust you run the risk of the trust losing its classification as a Qualified Income Trust and thereby making the Medicaid applicant have too much income resulting in them losing their benefits for a period of time until it is corrected.

For example, if you are thinking about transferring real estate into a Miller Trust you are headed for disaster. If you are thinking about moving funds (other than income in the month it is received) from other accounts into the Miller Trust you are making a mistake. If you are thinking about transferring funds from someone else’s account into the Miller Trust account you are making a mistake.

Those are just a few of the more common examples that I have come across. As I’ve discussed in many articles on this site, creating and maintaining Medicaid eligibility is a very technical process and any mistake (even an innocent one) can cost tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid nursing home bills. If you need a Miller Trust to create Medicaid eligibility for someone and want to take advantage of years of experience then give me a call at (832) 592-7913.